NGC 7723 — SBb in Aquarius
SBb in Aquarius, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 89 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 7723
What you are looking at
NGC 7723 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. It is tilted about 47° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 81,000 light-years, about 83% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus shines brightly with the light of gas falling into its central black hole. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1975N. It is cited in 201 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 13 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 7723 today set out about 89 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,862 km/s (4.2 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 7723 sits within the constellation Aquarius. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in October it stands about 37° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: NGC 7727 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,100,000 light-years from it); NGC 7724 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,150,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 468 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 72009 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBb |
| Angular diameter | 3.13′ |
| Right ascension | 23h38m57.1s |
| Declination | -12°57′39.9″ |
| Constellation | Aquarius |
| Inclination | 47.2° |
| Light travel time | 89 million years |
| Bar | yes, from the catalogue |
Check every figure above in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
What is sold
A print of this galaxy and the record of the calculation, once. When it sells it leaves the register and is not offered again. We assign no names and no ownership — nobody can sell you those.
At 3.1 arcminutes this is a Exceptional galaxy, which is the tier where a real photograph shows clear structure and dust lanes. The tier comes from the measured diameter, not from a price list.
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